Borrowing a few tricks from the Boss CE-2 makes this very evolved, sweet, and fat BBD chorus a modulation star.
Intoxicating modulations. Capable of great subtlety. Thoughtful, high-quality construction.
Maybe a touch spendy for a simple BBD chorus?
$219
Mythos Fates
mythospedals.com
Wondering how to get me to buy a pedal on looks alone? Well, Mythos’ The Fates chorus is a fine place to start. Blue Hammerite paint, chunky enclosure, Ampeg Daka Ware-style chicken head knobs—basically the stompbox equivalent of a clean, stock ’61 Ford Falcon. Yum. You know what else is tasty? The fat and creamy modulations from this unit.
Mythos makes no secret of the ways the Fates’ design is rooted in the Boss CE-2, and that’s fine by me. My friend’s CE-2 is the pedal that broke my anti-chorus bias. I’d venture that the Mythos is every bit as rich as that O.G. CE-2. But Mythos added two important features—increased depth range, and a vibrato, which, as an EHX Deluxe Memory Man devotee, delights me to no end. The Fates excels at every one of my favorite chorus applications. Paired with an electric 12-string, it can either add near-subliminal shimmy or heavy warp to fundamentals and overtones that make a room tremble and sparkle—no reverb or delay required. Classic 6-string tricks—Gilmour waves, Hendrix vibe, Marr and Pretenders sway, and Graham Coxon vibrato quease—are always just a few very smooth twists away. It’s nicely built, too, with solid switchwork, silky, stable pots, and an IC that’s well-insulated from tour abuse, heavy-footed switching, and jack snapping. A tag of $219? Sure, that’s a little steep. But I bet you’ll never need another analog chorus. Why can’t everything be this delicious and simple
Mythos Pedals The Fates Chorus Demo | First Look
- Review: Boomerang E-155 Chorus-Delay Pedal ›
- Pedal Issue - Premier Guitar ›
- Confessions of a Pedal Nerd ›
A well-organized sample library is crucial for musicians, producers, and sound designers. It enables smoother workflows, saves time, and nurtures creativity by providing easy access to the perfect sounds.
Greetings, and welcome! Last month, I began the first of a multi-part Dojo series centered around field recording and making your own sound libraries by focusing on the recording process. This time, I’m going to show you ways to organize and create a library from the recordings you’ve made. We discover things by noticing patterns in nature, and we create things by imposing our own patterns back into nature as well. This is exactly what you’re doing by taking the uncontrolled, purely observant recordings you’ve made in the natural world and prepping them as raw material for new patterned, controlled forms of musical expression. Tighten up your belts, the Dojo is now open.
Easy Access Needs
Before you start diving in and heavily editing your recordings, identify what you have and determine how to categorize it for easy retrieval. A well-organized sample library is crucial for musicians, producers, and sound designers. It enables smoother workflows, saves time, and nurtures creativity by providing easy access to the perfect sounds. Whether you are starting from scratch or adding to an existing collection, a systematic approach can make a world of difference.
Take stock of your files, identify patterns, themes, and timbres, and then decide on potential categories for folders that make sense for your workflow. Typically, I will make dozens and dozens of raw recordings (empty stairwells, gently tapping two drinking glasses together, placing a contact mic on industrial equipment, etc.) and I will prearrange them into sub categories before I even start to edit. My top-level folders are: percussive and melodic. I may divide further depending on the source material.
For instance, recordings that could become drum hits can be separated into folders for kicks, snares, hi-hats, and percussion. Melodic information that might be used for one-shots or loops can be sorted by potential instrument type or key. This will save you hours of time later. For those who work with a specific genre, it can also be useful to group recordings by their possible stylistic context, like industrial, cinematic, or soundscapes.
Working with Raw Material
What are the best ways to start working with the raw recordings? First, make sure you have some way to edit them. Open your DAW and create a new session. Be sure to include the date and “raw recordings” in your session title and save the session. Next, import the file(s) into your DAW as a new audio track, or hardware sampler (for old schoolers). Then start listening for anything that ignites your imagination. Keep it short and pay attention to what you’re hearing. Ask yourself, “What would this be cool for?” Here’s a personal tip: Don’t delete everything that is not of immediate interest, just mute the sections that you’re not identifying with right now—they might become amazing once you start to process them with delays, reverb, and pitch shifting. Once you’ve got loads of appealing individual snippets and you’ve trimmed the start and ending for each one, you’re going to bounce or export each individual element to a specified folder on your hard drive. Now it’s time to think about file naming conventions.
“A well-organized sample library is crucial for musicians, producers, and sound designers.”
Clear and consistent file names are crucial. They ensure you can search for samples directly through your operating system or DAW without relying solely on folder hierarchies. Include lots of details like sample type, tempo, key, or sound source in the file name because it makes it easier to locate quickly in the future. For example, instead of naming a file “loop001.wav,” a more descriptive name like “Broken_Guitar_Arp_Raw.wav” provides instant context. I like using “Raw” at the end of my file name so I know it is in its original state. If you want to add processing like distortion, amp sims, modulation, and time-based effects, go ahead! Export each iteration with a new file name, e.g., “Broken_Guitar_Arp_TapeDelay.wav.”
Building a sample library isn’t just about organization—it’s also about curation. Remember that the quality of your library is waymore important than its size. Focus on making high-quality samples. Take the time to audition each of your recordings to weed out those of inferior sound quality. This decluttering process helps streamline your workflow and ensures that every file in your collection adds value.
Next month, I’ll guide you through ways to import and use your samples in your recording sessions. Namaste.
This versatile ramping phaser is distinguished by a fat voice, vibrato section, and practical preamp.
Uncommonly thick phaser voice. Useful range of ramping effects. The practical preamp section can be used independently. Nice vibrato mode.
Visually cluttered design. Some ramping effects can be difficult to dial in with precision.
$249
Beetronics FX
beetronicsfx.com
The notion behind a ramping phaser predates the phaser pedal by many moons—namely in the form of thetwo-speed Leslie rotating speaker. A Leslie isn’t a phaser in the strictest sense, though the physics behind what the listener perceives are not dissimilar, and as any phaser devotee can tell you, there are many audible similarities between the two. At many phase rates and intensities, a phaser stands in convincingly for a Leslie, and the original king of phasers, theUniVibe was conceived as a portable alternative to rotary speakers.
Fundamentally, the analog 6-stageBeetronics Larva Morphing Phaser (which, henceforth, we shall call the LMP) effectively mimics the acceleration and deceleration of a two-speed Leslie speaker. That isn’t a new concept in the pedal universe. But Beetronics’ take offers many cool variations on that ramping effect. It also features a wet-signal-only vibrato setting and a nice sounding preamp. And at its core is a rich, deep phase voice that is a distinct alternative to many standard-bearing phasers.
Thick As Honey
There is an inherent richness in the low-to-mid range in the LMP’s phase voice—even at the lowest resonance settings. Beetronics lofty sonic goal and inspiration were the famously warm and dusky Moogerfooger MF-103 12 -stage Phaser, and it certainly It sounds thicker than any of my vintage or vintage-clone phasers, including both 4- and 6-stage models. The heft of this phaser voice will be enough to sell the LMP to some prospective customers. Surely the preamp, which lends its own fatness, contributes something to the low-mid weight. On the other hand, I used the LMP’s preamp alone in front of each of the vintage phasers I tested and each still sounded comparatively thin in that part of the EQ spectrum, so there is something in the modulation section of the LMP circuit that adds its own thump and heft. When you use the phaser in clean and low-gain overdrive situations, that low-mid bump can sound pretty nice, especially if a bright amp or guitar are in the chain or you use reverb or another effect that tends to emphasize treble peaks. Things can get a little more complicated when you stack effects, use big, mid-scooped fuzzes, or situate your phaser at the front of an effects chain. A potential buyer would be wise to investigate how that tone profile fits with the most permanent parts of their rig, and some may dig a more traditional sound that makes room for more detail, but in general I loved the sound, particularly in minimalist effect arrays.
Fluid States
The ramping or “morphing” effect that is the marquee feature in the LMP is engaging, practical, and opens up many possibilities, particularly in terms of segues and phrase punctuation. Obviously, the independent sets of rate and depth controls for each phase circuit enable morphs between very different phase textures. But it’s the ramp-shape switch that makes the LMP much more than just two phasers in one. In the leftmost position, phaser 1 will ramp up or down to the phaser 2 position at the rate determined by the ramp speed control and stay fixed there until you hit the left footswitch again (clip 1). If you also set the ramp speed to zero, this makes the switches between the two phasers instantaneous.
In the middle position, the left footswitch assumes non-latching functionality. It will ramp to the phaser 2 speed when you hold the switch and return to phaser 1 speed when you release. And when you set the ramp rate to zero, you can create momentary and instantaneous switches between speeds as you hold or release the switch (clip 2). In the rightmost position, phaser 1 ramps to phaser 2 as you hold the switch and then moves back to the phaser 1 rate immediately after it is released. I enjoyed using radically different phaser rates for these functions most, but more subdued and mellow shifts are no less useful for lending musical interest in the right context.
Hits From the Hive
Beetronics famously has fun with their pedal designs. Enclosure graphics are typically bold and eye-engaging, and while that makes the company’s wares feel like treasures among meat-and-potatoes stomps, it can make the pedals needlessly busy to some. A number of players will no doubt feel the same about the LMP, and the cluttered enclosure graphics and blinking lights can have the effect of making the pedal seem less approachable than it is. In fact, the LMP is pretty intuitive once you learn which control is which. The phaser knobs are mirror images of each other. The preamp controls (preamp level and master output) are comparatively petite but grouped conveniently in the center. The chrome-ringed (and very range-y) ramping speed and resonance controls are visually distinct from the rest of the knobs, while the two 3-way toggles for ramping shape and the preamp-only, preamp + phaser, and vibrato + phaser modes are easy to sort out. It’s no model of minimalist, easy-to-read graphics, and I wouldn’t want to sort out this pedal for the first time on a dark stage. In general, though, functionality does not suffer much for the bold appearance.
The Verdict
The U.S.-made LMP is a solid, high-quality piece of work that makes its $249 price tag much more digestible. And the degree to which you perceive the cost as excessive will certainly depend on the degree to which you consider phaser, rotary, and vibrato sounds foundational within your musical creations. Accordingly, you should consider the value score here on a sliding scale. But with a fine-sounding and functional preamp section and ramping capability broad enough to span simple Leslie emulation, and radical shifts that can themselves serve as dramatic musical hooks and punctuation, the Larva Morphing Phaser could, for the right player, … um …“bee” more than the sum its parts
The voice of the guitar can make the unfamiliar familiar, expand the mind, and fill the heart with inspiration. Don’t be afraid to reach for sounds that elevate. A host of great players, and listening experiences, are available to inspire you.
In late fall, I had the good fortune of hearing David Gilmour and Adrian Belew live, within the same week. Although it’s been nearly two months now, I’m still buzzing. Why? Because I’m hooked on tone, and Gilmour and Belew craft some of the finest, most exciting guitar tones I’ve ever heard.
They’re wildly different players. Gilmour, essentially, takes blues-based guitar “outside”; Belew takes “outside” playing inside pop- and rock-song structures. Both are brilliant at mating the familiar and unfamiliar, which also makes the unfamiliar more acceptable to mainstream ears—thereby expanding what might be considered the “acceptable” vocabulary of guitar.
Belew was performing as part of the BEAT Tour, conjuring up the music of the highly influential King Crimson albums of the ’80s, and was playing with another powerful tone creator, Steve Vai, who had the unenviable role of tackling the parts of Crimson founder Robert Fripp, who is a truly inimitable guitarist. But Vai did a wonderful job, and his tones were, of course, superb.
To me, great tone is alive, breathing, and so huge and powerful it becomes an inspiring language. Its scope can barely be contained by a venue or an analog or digital medium. At Madison Square Garden, as Gilmour sustained some of his most majestic tones—those where his guitar sound is clean, growling, foreign, and comforting all at once—it felt as if what was emanating from his instrument and amps was permeating every centimeter of the building, like an incredibly powerful and gargantuan, but gentle, beast.
“The guitar becomes a kind of tuning fork that resonates with the sound of being alive.”
It certainly filled me in a way that was akin to a spiritual experience. I felt elevated, joyful, relieved of burdens—then, and now, as I recall the effect of those sounds. That is the magic of great tone: It transports us, soothes us, and maybe even enlightens us to new possibilities. And that effect doesn’t just happen live. Listen to Sonny Sharrock’s recording of “Promises Kept,” or Anthony Pirog soloing on the Messthetics’ Anthropocosmic Nest, or Jimi Hendrix’s “Freedom.” (Or, for that matter, any of the Hendrix studio recordings remixed and remastered under the sensibilities of John McDermott.) Then, there’s Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and so many other recordings where the guitar becomes a kind of tuning fork that resonates with the sound of being alive. The psychoacoustic effects of great tones are undeniable and strong, and if we really love music, and remain open to all of its possibilities, we can feel them as tangibly as we feel the earth or the rays of the sun.
Sure, that might all sound very new age, but great tones are built from wood and wires and science and all the stuff that goes into a guitar. And into a signal chain. As you’ve noticed, this is our annual “Pro Pedalboards” issue, and I urge you to consider—or better yet, listen to—all the sounds the 21 guitarists in our keystone story create as you examine the pedals they use to help make them. Pathways to your own new sounds may present themselves, or at least a better understanding of how a carefully curated pedalboard can help create great tones, make the unfamiliar familiar, and maybe even be mind-expanding.
After all these years, some players still complain that pedals have no role other than to ruin a guitar’s natural tone. They are wrong. The tones of guitarists like Gilmour, Belew, Vai, Hendrix, Pirog, and many more prove that. The real truth about great tones, and pedals and other gear used with forethought and virtuosity, is that they are not really about guitar at all. They are about accessing and freeing imagination, about crafting sounds not previously or rarely heard in service of making the world a bigger, better, more joyful place. As Timothy Leary never said, when it comes to pedalboards and other tools of musical creativity, it’s time to turn on, tune up, and stretch out!
With 350W RMS, AMP TONE control, and custom Celestion speaker, the TONEX is designed to deliver "unmatched realism."
"The next step in its relentless pursuit of tonal perfection for studio and stage. Born from the same innovative drive that introduced the world's most advanced AI-based amp modeling, TONEX Cab ensures that every nuance of modern rigs shines onstage. It sets the new standard for FRFR powered cabinets for authentic amp tones, delivering unmatched realism to TONEX Tone Models or any other professional amp modeler or capture system."
Setting a New Standard
- Professional full-range flat-response (FRFR) powered cab for guitar
- True 350 W RMS / 700 W Peak with audiophile-grade power amps and advanced DSP control
- The most compact 12" power cab on the market, only 28 lbs. (12.7 kg)
- Exclusive AMP TONE control for amp-in-the-room feel and response
- Custom Celestion 12'' guitar speaker and 1'' high-performance compression driver
- 132 dB Max SPL for exceptional punch and clarity on any stage
- Programmable 3-band EQ, custom IR loader with 8 onboard presets and software editor
- Inputs: XLR/1/4" combo jack Main and AUX inputs, MIDI I/O and USB
- Output: XLR output (Pre/Post processing) for FOH or cab linking, GND lift
- Durable wood construction with elegant design and finish
- Swappable grill cloths (sold separately) and integrated tilt-back legs
Finally, Amp-in-the-room Tone and Feel
Thanks to its unique DSP algorithms, TONEX Cab's exclusive AMP TONE control stands apart from any other FRFR in the market today, allowing players to dial in the perfect amount of real amp feel and response to any room or venue.
It achieves this through advanced algorithmic control over the custom high-wattage Celestion 12'' guitar speaker and 1'' high-performance compression driver. Together, they deliver the optimal resonance and sound dispersion players expect from a real cab. Combined with a wood cabinet, this creates a playing experience that feels alive and responsive, where every note blooms and sustains just like a traditional amp.
Ultra-portable and Powerful
TONEX Cab is the most compact 12'' powered cab in its class, leaving extra room in the car to pack two for stereo or to travel lighter. Despite its minimal size, the TONEX Cab delivers true 350 W RMS / 700 W Peak Class-D power. Its unique DSP control provides true-amp sound at any volume, reaching an astonishing 132 dB Max SPL for low-end punch and clarity at any volume. With larger venues, the XLR output can link multiple cabs for even more volume and sound dispersion.
Amplify Any Rig Anywhere
TONEX Cab is the perfect companion for amplifying the tonal richness, dynamics and feel of TONEX Tone Models and other digital amp sims. It adds muscle, articulation, and a rich multi-dimensional sound to make playing live an electrifying and immersive experience.
Its onboard IR loader lets players connect analog preamps directly to the cab or save DSP power by removing the modeler's IR block. Precision drivers also work perfectly with acoustic guitars and other audio instruments, ensuring that time-based effects shine with studio-quality clarity and detail.
Pro-level Features
TONEX Cab offers plug-and-play simplicity with additional pro features for more complex rigs. Features include a 3-band EQ for quickly dialing in your tone to a specific room without editing each preset. You can program the eight memory slots to store both EQ and AMP TONE settings, plus your cabinet IR selection using the onboard controls or the included TONEX Cab Control software. Seamlessly select between memory slots with the onboard PRESET selector or via the built-in MIDI I/O.
On Stage to FOH
TONEX Cab's balanced audio output makes it easy to customize the stage or house sound. It features pre- or post-EQ/IR for cab linking or sending sound to the front-of-house (FOH). The AUX IN allows users to monitor a band mix or play backing tracks. These flexible routing options are ideal for fine-tuning the setup at each gig, big or small.
Stereo and Stacking
With two or more TONEX Cabs, any rig becomes even more versatile. A dual TONEX pedal rig creates a lush, immersive tone with spacious, time-based effects. Players can also build a wet/dry or wet/dry/wet rig to precisely control the direct/FX mix, keeping the core tone intact while letting the wet effects add depth and space. Stack multiple cabs for a massive wall of sound and increased headroom to ensure the tone stays punchy and powerful, no matter the venue size.
Designed to Inspire
The TONEX Cab's Italian design and finish give it a timeless yet modern look under any spotlight. The integrated tilt-back legs let users angle the cab and direct the sound, which is optimal for hearing better in small or dense sound stages. Swappable optional grills (Gold/Silver) make it easy to customize each rig's appearance or keep track of different TONEX Cabs between bandmates or when running stereo rigs.
Bundled Software
TONEX Cab includes a dedicated TONEX Cab Control software application for managing and loading presets and IRs. As part of the TONEX ecosystem, it also includes TONEX SE, the most popular capture software program, with 200 Premium Tone Models, unlimited user downloads via ToneNET and AmpliTube SE for a complete tone-shaping experience.
Pricing and Availability
TONEX Cab is now available for pre-order from the IK online store and IK dealers worldwide at a special pre-order price of $/€699.99 (reg. MSRP $/€799.99*) with a black grill as the default. The optional gold and silver grill cloths are available at a special pre-order price of $/€39.99 (reg. MSRP $/€49.99*). Introductory pricing will end on March 18, with TONEX Cab shipping in April.
*Pricing excluding tax.
For more information, please visit ikmultimedia.com